Outage signals delay for Vodafone One Net

Vodafone is delaying its major One Net upgrade programme after customers were hit with an outage last month, triggered by a software update.

The outage happened during a planned software upgrade to the One Net platform. Although the incident, which happened overnight, was resolved by midday the following day, it affected hundreds of One Net customers. As a result the next stage of the upgrade has been put back by a month while the operator overhauls its implementation processes to ensure no further outages occur.

In a letter to Vodafone One Net partners Rob Mukherjee, head of Vodafone Partner Services, confirmed that the latest upgrade, originally planned for 8 December will be delayed until 5 January.

He said: ‘We had previously communicated to you that we were planning on deploying an upgrade to the One Net platform on the weekend of 8 December. However, in light of the past two weeks, we have made the decision to postpone this release to allow us to build in additional pre-launch planning and quality assurance checks.’

Mukherjee said these will include additional load testing and planning. At the time of the outage, Vodafone Partner Services, which oversees the One Net service, said the problem was not caused by the One Net upgraded software but by the process of changing the software. It moved quickly to offer partners additional customer support in the form of direct calls or visits from Vodafone representatives to explain the cause of the outage.

However, dealers this week continued to question the performance of Vodafone’s One Net service. One dealer said: ‘One Net has been plagued with glitches since its launch. This is just the latest. It is fundamentally flawed and a lot of dealers are reluctant to sell it to customers because of these problems. Let’s hope this delay will be the last as it does need to be improved as soon as possible.’

Another said: ‘A few weeks over Christmas won’t make too much difference. What is more important is that the upgrade will address some of these ongoing problems. They certainly need to be addressed as soon as possible. This is beyond teething problems.’

Mukherjee promised a number of improvements to services including ‘issues relating to voicemail and missed call notifications on hunt groups’, as well as improving speech quality and reducing the number of dropped calls. The upgrade will also see the rollout of new services including a One Net Directory.

A Vodafone UK spokesperson said: ‘Vodafone One Net is a cutting-edge communications solution and as such we’re continually enhancing what the service offers, how it works and its robustness as we grow the number of One Net customers further. ‘We’re working closely with partners and customers to continuously refine the product to ensure customers are able to benefit from the full functionality and features of One Net. We remain committed to the service and to helping more British businesses find better ways of working.’